Replication is widely used in storage systems to backup data stored at a production site to another remote site for disaster recovery. In many cases, the Internet is used for the connection between the production site and the disaster recovery site. Many different protocols, including TCP/IP, may used to transfer the data. Also, in many cases, the data may be encrypted in transit to protect the data.
In storage systems, the data in a block storage device (e.g., HDD) may also be encrypted for security reasons. For a write request, the storage system encrypts data from the device requesting the write (i.e., the host) before writing the data to the block storage device. Similarly, for a read request, the storage system decrypts the data before presenting the data to the requesting device. The encryption/decryption process is transparent to the requesting device because this encryption/decryption is processed in the file system layer. However, the encryption/decryption process of the data in the block storage device, and the encryption/decryption process of the data in transit are not integrated processes, and are therefore duplicative processes that are wasteful of computing resources.